Chapter IX: We Await Developments (3)

"So I reflected as I sat in that deep chair and watched the wood-fire burning in the bronze grate. A silent man in a black suit came in and put a decanter and siphon at my elbow and went out again. Suddenly a phrase I had heard at sea came back to me, sharp and resonant. I was talking to old Fred Tateham, the mate, one day, he who had had a collision and lost his command, and he had been telling me his plans for his younger boy. He was going to put him in his brother's office. 'You know,' said he, 'I've a very successful brother.' I forget what this successful brother had succeeded in--some genteel profession like accountancy or attorney. It struck me as amusing at the time, a man boasting of the possession of a successful brother, just as he might proclaim his pride in a clever child or a fine garden or a good terrier. And now the phrase came back as one I could use myself. I had 'a very successful brother.' To confirm this whimsical notion, the successful brother entered the room in evening dress, with a band of crape on the arm and a black tie. He was irreproachable as he stood on the rug snapping black amber buttons into his cuffs and settling his shirt-front. He was so irreproachable that I lost my feeling of discomfort and inferiority in his presence. He leaned his head on the carved stone frame of the fire-place and stared at the flames thoughtfully.

"'You live here alone?' I asked, and he nodded.

"'For long?' He shook his head. 'I never stop long in digs,' he remarked, 'I get sick of them, don't you know, and try fresh.'

"'Where's Gladys?' I inquired, almost without knowing what I said. I was as surprised as he was at such temerity. For an instant he did not know what I meant. 'Gladys,' said he. 'Who the----Oh! now I remember----I don't know. Yes,' he went on, turning back to the fire, 'I remember now, Charley. I don't suppose I looked very well from your point of view, but all the same you haven't come home with a dagger in your sleeve, have you?' He laughed. 'By Jove, you weren't prowling along that road to-night waiting to stab me, were you, Charley? Like some bally foreigner.'

"'You know I wasn't,' I said. 'And besides, I had no selfish reasons for asking. I thought you might be engaged.'

"'I engaged?' he said, and shook his head. 'I'm not a marrying man. I wonder if we're going to die out, we Carvilles. Rotten race, anyhow. We seem to have no luck with our women. The mater was the only one. You should have seen them at the funeral. My God! No luck with our women, Charley. A natural tendency towards the lower middle classes. Don't you ever feel it? Like splashing through mud in dress pumps. I do. It's our curse, I believe. The Curse of the Carvilles!'

"I was so dumfounded at this unexpected piece of gratuitous slander that I sat perfectly still, although the silent servant in black had come in and announced dinner, and my brother was telling me to go and have a spruce-up in his dressing room. It was like being knocked on the head with a wooden mallet. I was stunned. Even when I found myself in a small room full of bureaus and wardrobes and had nearly walked into a double full-length mirror, I still felt stunned. He wondered if we were going to die out, did he. And he assumed, with a blood-freezing fatalism, that we both had a depraved taste in women. I looked round helplessly for a wash-stand and caught sight of a bath-room beyond a blue portiere. A natural tendency towards the lower-middle class, if you please! And I was just on the point of telling him about my sweetheart in Genoa! Going into the bath-room, I almost fell into a porcelain bath set in flush with the floor. A huge basin full of hot water stood ready under the nickelled faucets. Soaps of many colours lay at hand. Nail-scrubbers, manicuring tools, towels, sponges, creams, talcum powders, dentifrices, hair-lotions, blue bottles (with vermilion labels marked poison), green bottles marked ammonia, bottles with bulbs and sprays, cases of razors, festoons of strops--all these stood or lay on shelves at my elbow as I proceeded to wash my hands and face with a piece of yellow primrose soap that by some chance was among the welter of expensive brands. No luck with our women, observe. I certainly had had no luck with Gladys. But he, he, to whom women ran as though he were a necromancer, as though he had the secret of some spell that would make them forever youthful and lovely and happy--what complaint dared he make against them? Yet he had formulated the monstrous theory that 'our family' must either succumb to the lower-middle class or die out because of our unfortunate luck with our women. It was one of those propositions which are simply preposterous in theory, but perfectly true in fact. As I washed my face in that expensive basin and rubbed it with the expensive towels and brushed my hair with the expensive ivory-backed brushes, I lighted upon this interesting feature of my brother's thesis. It was true. What I could not get over was how the dickens he had discovered it, living as he did. It struck me as a good example of the cleverness that is so much more useful than either genius or industry. I doubt if he had any clear notion of what was meant by psychology, but he had intuitively divined an obscure flaw in our complicated mentality, a flaw searching back to some unsavoury interlude in our history. Of course, by lower-middle class he meant servants. This silent chap in black, with the hair growing low by his ears, would be of that class, the lower-middle. And--here I put the ivory-backed brushes down carefully and looked at myself as though I saw a stranger in the glass--and what was more, by the same token, was not I, a seafaring man, also one of the lower-middle? Good heavens! I became so tangled up in the new points of view suddenly illuminated by my brother's outrageous remarks that I nearly stepped into his expensive porcelain bath again. And then I heard him calling to me that the soup was getting cold, and I followed the servant into a small dining room singularly bare of everything save the indispensable belongings of a meal. Even the pictures were limited to one on each wall, as though more might distract the diner from his food. Except for a light over the lift opening there were only two electric candles with lemon shades on the table, where my brother sat, bolt upright, eating soup.

"Now, you know, I laughed as I sat down, because I would not have lived in this fashion at all. My idea of comfort, I reflected, was probably lower-middle. It included a high tea, with real food to eat, and a book propped up against the tea-cosy while I ate. Once or twice in my life I have been at the mercy of a _table d'hote_ and I was not happy. Passenger ships, for example. They have all sorts of _purees_ and _consommes_ and _entrees_ and _fricassees_ and _souffles_, but very little nourishing food. For some mysterious reason they serve you with a homeopathic dose of each course and then pitch about half a ton of all sorts of things down the garbage shoot into the sea, for the gulls and fishes to gorge themselves on. No doubt, as I say, my notions were wrong and my brother's were right. No use quarrelling about tastes.

"'Why do you laugh, Charley?' he inquired. 'I was thinking of what you said about our unfortunate instincts,' I replied. 'No doubt it is true, but I was wondering how you discovered it.'

"'I should say it was obvious in the past,' he answered gravely. 'As for the present--you and I you know--one has intuitions, what? And I have talked with men of old family, and they have told me of cases they know of.'

"'And you think,' I said, 'that it is a real danger, to marry beneath you?'

"'Yes,' he said, finishing his soup. '_You_ aren't contemplating it, are you, Charley?'

"'I don't look at life as you do,' I observed. 'I have become rather tired of all this talk about classes. I don't feel myself to be a blue-blooded person at all. I am a seafaring man. Plenty of my shipmates marry into their own class--the lower-middle class.'

"The silent person in black came in with a bottle in a basket, and filled our glasses with a white wine. My brother turned his glass round as he looked at me solemnly. 'I see,' he said, and began to eat his fish.

"'Of course,' I went on, 'your intuitions, as you call them, are quite correct as regards me, because when I marry, she will probably be just what you say. She would be as uncomfortable in a place like this as--as I am.'

"'Good God!' he muttered, staring at me. 'Is it as bad as that? I should have thought you would be glad to live decently when you get the chance.'

"'I have simple tastes,' I answered.

"'So have the beasts of the field,' he retorted, and fixed his eyes moodily upon his wine. I laughed.

"'Far better,' I said, 'to go each his own road and do the best he can. I've been through a good deal, Frank, since I saw you, and I dare say you've been through a lot too, only different. I've worked and been worked upon, and I've come to certain conclusions. There is no place for me in all this ordered English life, with its classes and masses and so on. I was thinking about it this afternoon when you nearly ran over me. Pride is at the bottom of half the misery in England. Personal integrity is all I ask of a man, modesty what I admire most in a woman. As for what you call splashing through mud in dress-pumps, I know what you mean and I avoid it. _Worthless_ women are to be found in all grades. Marriage, no doubt, is a lottery, not only for us, but for the women. I doubt if taking thought ever makes it any less of a lottery. You say we Carvilles have no luck with our women. I wonder what 'our women' would say if they heard you. Are we the last word in humanity? Are we flawless in our integrity and purpose and achievement?'

"My brother shook his head without looking up from his plate.

"'That's not what I meant at all,' he remarked sullenly. 'That sort of thing doesn't apply to women. I was referring to breeding. Women of breeding would not trust themselves to us.'

"'Well,' I said, 'I shan't lose any sleep about it. If I were chief of a passenger ship, the lady-passengers of breeding----'

"My brother waved his hand. 'Let us dry up,' he said. 'You don't understand.'

"But I did! I knew exactly what he meant and many a bitter hour it had cost me when I was infatuated with the convent-bred miss who had trotted after him as soon as he had whistled 'come!' Breeding! The cant of it. The silly dishonesty of it! It is like those little three-by-two front yards you see in suburban streets, the last contemptible vestige of the rolling park-lands and fair demesnes of a far-off feudal time. It is like the silly Latin mottoes and heraldic crests you see on the doors of automobiles. It is a fetish in England. The boy from the great public schools sets the fashion, and all the little tinpot grammar-schools and academies follow suit and ape the clothes and the manners and the speech, the mincing speech, of people of breeding. And the little professional people who live in suburban villas do the same. They all worship and fear the fetish, the Collar-and-Tie god. You had better fasten a mill-stone about your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea than say or be or do anything their despicable little code considers ill-bred. Oh yes, I knew what my brother meant by breeding, but my experience had not tallied with what I had been taught. Sometimes I have fancied that some strain of chivalry had kept him under the illusion of birth and gentility. And then I have come to the conclusion that he was one of those who see things so objectively that they impress one as automatons. They don't learn, they know. They live in the world as if it was their home. They use their passions and desires as animals use their instincts. They have no diffidence before the great facts of life. And having this franchise in their pockets, so to speak, this permanent pass to every quarter of the City of the World, having this animal candour of outlook, they are naturally inarticulate. They are easily misunderstood because self-expression is foreign to them and they have no interest in abstract propositions as such. They pick up a phrase and play with it for a while, just as a kitten will play with a ball, or a puppy will walk round with a piece of wood in his mouth, pretending it is a bone. My brother was a good example, I thought, of this. What he said sounded true, and as far as he knew was true, because he had not got it out of books. A man of 'good family' had put the idea into his head. No doubt he would forget it in a month or so. And whatever he might think or hear or say, he would go on living his very untrammelled life, unabashed by Time or the perplexities of existence, until....

"And here I stopped in my reflections, for I am giving you now my thoughts as I walked back to my lodgings in Bloomsbury. I stopped, for it occurred to me that a man whose course is untrammelled may easily get beyond the bounds set by the unimaginative laws of the community. In plain words, I stopped to wonder admiringly what would become of him, supposing he didn't break his neck in his own motor-cars. I had seen him start, the eight cylinders of his monstrous and ridiculous machine thundering their unmuffled exhaust into the night and scaring the passing cab-horses. He had moved off with a wave of the hand, rather preoccupied with a portmanteau that was strapped beside him, moved off down Piccadilly towards Chelsea and Clapham. I reflected, as I passed the sombre, crouching shadow of the Museum, now he was flying under the stars along the Surrey roads, the great beams splitting the darkness ahead of him, the dust of his passing settling on the hedgerows and soiling the wayside turf. And to what end, I wondered, did my successful brother rush headlong through the night? To achieve greater success? To preach his gospel of breeding? To succour Gentility in distress? I wondered and went to bed.

"No, I did not see him again until long afterward, and in very altered circumstances, as they say. The harm he did me on this occasion did not come home until later, when in Italy again, I read in an Italian journal some of the details of the affair. A wave of anger swept over me then, I remember, at having been so far fooled as to preach to him my gospel of integrity in men and modesty in women, while he was deep in tortuous finance and unprofitable intrigues. Mind you, I don't know now the rights of the affair. The counsel for the defence made a brilliant effort to establish a case of the chivalrous shielding of a lady. He claimed that the accused had been lured to destruction by the voices of sirens. A man of brilliant social gifts, he had been carried away, intoxicated, by his success and had promised more than he could perform. The very fact of the lady (of rank) not coming forward, but leaving the prosecution in the hands of the trustees, was a proof that the accused was more sinned against than sinning. And so on and so forth. It was all in the _Weekly Times_. I walked up to the Galleria Mazzini one fine evening and sat in the Orpheum reading the latest performance of my successful brother. But the Italian paper which first told me about it dealt with the incident from the artistic side. There are a good many Italians in Egypt, as you know, and this paper had a correspondent in Cairo with a sharp pen that cut little cameos of the cosmopolitan life that centres round the Esbekiah Gardens. For my brother had gone to Southampton on urgent business. His business was so urgent that he crossed to France that night and went straight to Marseilles, where he sailed in a Messageries Maritimes boat to Egypt. The article in the paper was called The Flight into Egypt. The new arrival at Shepheard's Hotel was the life of the English visitors still staying on in Cairo. Parties who had been living among the Beduin in the desert came back for a week at Shepheard's and were entranced with him and his hundred-horse-power car. The daughter of a Beyrout ship-chandler who had retired and built a house at Heliopolis was infatuated with him and tried to monopolize him at the dances. Incidentally we learned that his hotel expenses were five pounds a day. This interested me keenly, because at the same time I was living in ample comfort on exactly five shillings a day. I suppose, I don't know, for I've never had the money to try it--but I suppose there is a snap and a tang about a life that costs five pounds a day, which is irresistible to some souls. Or is it that the _cost_ of things never enters into these untrammelled people's heads at all? I wonder.

"But for all my personal interest in that Italian article and the black ending in Bow Street and a sentence of three years, I appreciated the author's treatment of his subject. He made a short story of it in the manner of Flaubert, minute, vivid and grim. He showed the weekly dances wearing thin at the end of the season, the daughters of the Levantine ship-chandlers, and Greek tobacco merchants, and Maltese petty officials, looking rather bleak at the prospect of another barren summer in Alexandria, when a new planet suddenly swims into their ken, young, rich, handsome, fascinating. They wake up again and the fight begins. You can see the Italian journalist, small, dark, with a pointed beard, pointed shoes, and sharp points of light in his dark eyes, hovering on the edge of the dance or perhaps taking a turn with the Levantine lady, observant and urbane. Things go on like this for a week or so when, the P. and O. boat from Brindisi having arrived at Port Said the day before, two English strangers arrive at the hotel. There is a dance that evening. I don't suppose this was strictly true, but I can understand the artistic pleasure it would give the Italian journalist to make little changes like that in his story. You remember Sir Walter Scott's confessed passion for giving a story 'a new hat and stick.' Well, there was a dance that evening, let us say, and the ladies, tired of the eternal English officer who never intends to let matters come to a head; tired of the French Canal clerk with his little friend in Alexandria; tired, perhaps, even of the witty and urbane Italian journalist, who I imagine loved his _Genova la Superba_, his Chianti and the keen air and heavenly blue of his Ligurian Apennines far more than he did that flat Delta full of all the half-breeds of the world--the ladies waited expectantly for the return of their new inspiration from Heliopolis, where he was gone with a party in his hundred-horse-power car. They wait in vain. Later the party return, somewhat puzzled themselves, explaining that two gentlemen had come out and interrupted the affair by drawing Mr. Carville aside and conversing with him inaudibly. And Mr. Carville makes his excuses. He apologizes to the Beyrout ship-chandler and everybody else, but he must leave with his friends for Port Said at once and catch the homeward-bound mail-boat. His presence is urgently demanded on business in London. The company gape. But our friend, the Italian journalist, doesn't go in for gaping. His business is, after all, news, and he burrows round, interviewing and telegraphing brothers of the craft until he lays bare the rather pathetic story. He doesn't tell it among his friends in the Land of Egypt. At any rate, he says he doesn't. He saves it for his home paper and lavished a lot of literary skill upon it. I imagine he got a good deal of fun out of my brother while he stayed in Cairo.

"And so, you see, my successful brother had experienced a serious set-back. I had a grim feeling that the women, 'our women,' as he had called them, would feel it far more in their seclusion in Surbiton than he would in his seclusion in--wherever he was. My feelings, in fact, were so grim that Rosa was perplexed, but I told her how my mother was now dead and I had no one in the world save herself. But at times I thought of our affairs gloomily. It seemed a poor end to our parents' fine dreams for the future--him so seriously set back, you may say, and me ploughing the ocean....

"And then it so happened that I got a chance of promotion on the spot. I'd been Second of the old _Corydon_ a good while, when the _Callisto_, a cattle-boat, came in from the Argentine. The chief had taken sick and been buried at sea. The owners telegraphed I was to take the post, and they would send out another Second. It was very exciting, of course, getting in charge at last. It is extraordinary, the weight of responsibility that settles down on you all at once. Matters that you used to settle out of hand assume a new aspect when you yourself become the ultimate authority. It doesn't matter how hard a man has to work as Second, or what his troubles may be, he's always got the Chief behind him. He can sleep easy and deep, as he generally does, poor chap. But the Chief is different. He becomes a fatalist. He can't sleep. He has to make his decisions and keep his forebodings locked in his own breast. He becomes preoccupied with an absurd weight of care. He realizes that he cannot step round the corner and get the overlooker's advice. He is alone on the wide sea, and if he cannot solve his own problems, none can help him. And that is good spiritual discipline for a young man. He finds out then what he is really made of.

"And Rosa was excited too, for it meant we could soon get married and live in passable comfort almost anywhere we liked. It was a happy time for us. You see, we had grown accustomed to each other's ways and habits. We had struck a sort of average, and knew pretty well what pleased and what jarred each other. That, I imagine, is one of the secrets of living with a woman. Being simply considerate won't do, though, of course, it is necessary. But what a woman does hate is being startled with some fresh habit or idea. It spoils her illusion, her necessary illusion, that she knows all about you.

"I did not tell her anything of my successful brother's performances, though I have heard that a man always tells his sweetheart all the disreputable side of his family history. What he forgets to tell her she worms out of him after they are married. It may be so. I must be an exception, then. As I have said, Rosa was curious about England, and in trying to answer her questions I discovered I didn't know very much about England myself. But I said nothing about our family and their poor luck with their women. Perhaps I divined what an attractive tale my successful brother's escapades would seem to a romantic girl. There was a dare-devil glamour about everything my brother did that fascinates some minds. Indeed, it fascinated mine. But I was cured of glamour. My early love affair had left me a feeling of panicky fear of romance. Perhaps there is Puritan blood in us; but I feel that passion in itself is evil. I wanted no more of it. I looked forward to domestic life, my own vine and fig tree. Some day, I dreamed, I might write another little book. At night, when all was running smooth, I'd put down odds and ends.... Some day, perhaps. I don't think I shall fret, though, if nothing comes of it.

"I liked my new job. The _Callisto_ was a much bigger ship than the _Corydon_, and more modern. Certainly cattle are very unpleasant cargo, and when we came into Genoa Harbour and the ship was being cleaned up, you could smell her clear away to the Galleria Mazzini! But at sea, on the long run south to Buenos Ayres, it was none so bad. I was looking forward to my marriage, you see. I was saving money and I was beginning to forget the past. It is easier for a seaman to do that than for anyone ashore. A sailor's past is all in pieces, so to speak. He can drop it bit by bit. But when you live ashore in one place, your past is like a heavy log that you're tied to and can't quit.

"Anyway, one night in Buenos Ayres, when I went ashore to mail a letter to Rosa, I was in good spirits. I reflected that, after all, my father's dreams of founding a family were not necessarily impossible. My brother's behaviour had nothing to do with it. I was going to marry Rosa. If we had children they would have a chance. But just as Rosa would not hear of Italy, so I was resolved with all my might against living in England. My children should never come under the influence of that gentility that had spoiled our early lives. For the old families in England who have been steeped in it for centuries, for men like Belvoir, for instance, I dare say it is an admirable plan. But not for me nor for mine. I had been writing about it to Rosa and I'd put at the bottom, 'America?'

"Another thing I wanted to do ashore was to call at the Sailors' Home and see if they could give us a Mess-room Steward. The young fellow who had shipped that voyage had deserted. They are always doing it in the Argentine. Wages are very high and they all think that they can do well up country. They sign on just to get their passage free. The ship was in Number One Dock, loading grain, and I walked across the bridge, up San Juan and took a trolley car along _Balcarce_ to the _Plaza de Mayo_. It was a fine evening in September, quite cool after dark. I was rather pleased with myself, too. The boilers had opened up uncommonly well; the Second knew his work, and I had nothing to do but keep an eye on things in general. I posted my letter, and after walking up and down the _Avenida de Mayo_ for a while, went down to the _Parque Colon_ to get a car back. The trolleys of Buenos Ayres are a bit puzzling to a stranger because the routes go by numbers. I knew nothing about the car I wanted except that it had the number 'Forty-eight' on the bows.

"The _Parque Colon_ is a large place running parallel with the Number Three Dock, full of big trees, and the avenues through it are rather dark. Considering how close it is to the busy part of the city it is lonely. Men have been found on the seats--dead! I daresay you have heard of Buenos Ayres. Like any other city where money can be made quickly, like London, like New York, Buenos Ayres is full of crooks. I believe they do their best to keep the place clean, but at that time it was pretty bad. The Skipper warned me to carry a revolver whenever I went ashore. Personally I'm against firearms. You generally find, after a row, that the dead man had a revolver in his hand. Unarmed strangers are not often touched.

"Number Forty-eight was a long while coming. Car after car came down the steep incline of _Victoria_ and turning round eastward rumbled off along _Paseo Colon_. I walked a few steps down one of the dark avenues and sat down on a seat to finish my cigar. It was like walking into a dark room. I could hear the roar of the city, yet at the same time I could hear some local sounds plainly. A musty smell came up on the breeze from the river. Suddenly I heard the long deep note of a steamer's whistle: the Mihanovich Mail Boat leaving for Monte Video. I sat there quietly, thinking of nothing in particular, just glancing up now and then to note the numbers of the trolleys. At the sound of the whistle, though, I fell to thinking of Mihanovich. What a romance that man's life must have been! They tell me that about forty years ago he'd landed in that place, a Russian Pole, ignorant of the language, without any money or friends, a low-down beach-comber. And here he was, a millionaire. Every tug on the river has his big M on the funnel. He had fleets of steamers, mines, railways, banks; and he was even tendering for the contract of the new docks the city wanted. No wonder others came to make their fortunes. No gentility needed to make _him_ succeed. And thinking of him, somehow I began to wonder if my brother might not make good out in the colonies say, some distant part of the world. Some time before this my uncle had told me that Frank had been released. Good behaviour had reduced his time to about twenty months. Surely, if he started in some place where they didn't ask too many questions he might get another chance. And I hoped so. I had no malice against him. He was one of those who can't keep their nature down; women were the curse of him. Well, perhaps prison had changed him. My uncle had said that he was 'changed,' but that might be for the worse. And just when the old chap was deciding to pay the passage out to New Zealand--buy him a ticket and see him on board--my brother had vanished again.

"Mind you, the interest I took in the matter was, you might say, purely dispassionate. I turned the case of my brother over in my mind as you might turn over the problems of a book you are half through. I'm not sure that at the moment when I was interrupted I was not smiling at the insane life he had led. For me, in spite of my sea-going business, life was settled, sedentary, monotonous. You can talk if you like of the romance of the sea, you may call it picturesque, but you cannot call it melodramatic. Personally I dislike melodrama. I dislike violent passion of any sort. I was thinking of all this and, as I say, smiling, when I heard tip-toes behind me, and before I could turn round I felt my throat held between two hands and my head pulled sharp over the back of the seat."

Once again Mr. Carville paused, opened his little brass box and took therefrom his piece of twist. With meticulous precision he pared and pared the required amount for his pipe, and began to roll it between his palms, his eyes fixed reflectively upon the geranium tubs. He had pushed his hat back a little, and above his steady grey-blue eyes there shone a pink unruffled brow.

"Once or twice in my life," he went on, "I have had a severe shock. Let me explain what I mean. A man brought up as I had been, in a genteel way, gets unaccustomed to physical violence. At school fighting was barred very strictly. In the works we pupils had no need to speak to the men at all. The first time I was ever struck was when I was a pupil. One of the apprentices thought I had been at his tools, came up and hit me a terrific blow on the chin. To anybody used to fighting it would have been nothing. It made me ill for a week. Of course, at sea I'd grown a good bit harder, but I'll never forget the first time a fireman went for me. There was always with me a feeling of outrage so to speak, a feeling not at all towards the man who struck me, you understand, but against myself, against a world that had made me what I was, soft and unskilled. That seems to me a peculiar weakness in our genteel civilization. You go along, for years perhaps, living a quiet, orderly, intellectual life, protected by law, by the Army and Navy, by the Police and by all 'the conventions of good society,' and then suddenly a man comes up and gives you a punch on the jaw! A very weak place in our civilization, I think?

"And, moreover, it brings into sharp relief another feature of our civilized life and that is our impotence to utilize our total experience. With a dog, a tiger, or a savage at the moment of attack, all his instincts, all his habits, all his intuition and ingenuity and physical advantage are automatically rushed to the front and flung upon the enemy in the most effective way possible. But the civilized man is 'all abroad.' His glasses fall off his nose, he loses his balance and his breath, he flinches, goes blind with helpless rage and indignation, and is held in contempt by the very policeman he pays to take the job off his hands and lock his enemy up. It's no exaggeration to say that some of us lack that power of instantly marshalling our faculties, maintaining a clear view and keeping the blood out of our eyes, which is called 'presence of mind.' It is a good phrase, that, because an intellectual person, when he is attacked with sudden violence, hasn't for the time being any mind at all. He is just a heap of nerves, a compound of puerile passion and hysterical protest.

"It seemed to me that my throat was held for a long time, in that grip. As a matter of fact it could not have been more than a couple of seconds. But it seemed long. It seemed to me as though the pressure, which was choking me to begin with, increased and increased. The power of it was not like the power of a machine, but evil, personal, spiteful. I remember I shut my eyes. I remember hot breath on my face. And then I remember a blank. In my memory it is like a space between inverted commas, without anything written. A blank....

"My head had slid down against the back of the seat, my knees were all cigar-dust, and my hat had fallen off, when I opened my eyes. I heard someone say, 'Sit up, for God's sake!' and I tried to do as I was told, to 'sit up for God's sake.' Somebody was sitting beside me, pulling at my shoulder. Now and again I heard him say, 'You damn fool!' He was angry with me then. I wondered what I'd done to make anybody angry. I tried to think. I'd been sitting on a seat in the _Parque Colon_. Very good. Why was I a damn fool? I decided to argue the point with this chap. I struggled up and felt for my hat. I heard him say, 'Listen, you fool!' There he was again. Always a fool. Then he said, 'Well, _look_ then, if you can't hear,' and he struck a match and held it before his face. Humph!

"He pinched the match between his fingers and we were in the dark again. He said, 'Well, Charley, old man, that was a near squeak for you, a damn near squeak. What the devil d'you go sitting round a place like this for?'

"I remember being very much amused at this. He was actually angry with me! He had nearly choked the life out of me, and he was angry with me! I had nothing to say. My tongue seemed glued to my teeth. I brushed my hat and began to look for my cigar. What I was really looking for was my wits.

"He went on talking. 'Charley,' he says, 'I'm desperate. I'm down and out. For God's sake give me some money? What are you?' he says, 'what are you doing here? I thought you were a sailor. You look prosperous. Give me--lend me some money, or I'll have to take it.'

"While he went on like this, sometimes threatening, sometimes whining, I was collecting my faculties. The feeling that some one had wrapped copper wire tight round my neck was going away. I found my cigar. I struck a match, and by the light of it I saw my brother again.

"Yes, he was down and out. He had not had a shave for a week, his hat had been picked off a rubbish-heap, his trousers were muddied and torn at the knees, his coat was buttoned up to hide his black, hairy chest. He had no shirt. He was down and out.

"I settled in my mind what had happened before I spoke. This brother of mine had apparently made an exception in my favour. He had crept up behind me with the deliberate intention of strangling me and picking my pocket. Seeing my face he had decided that he could pick my pocket without strangling me.

"The curious thing was that I had no feeling of anger towards him. What filled me with a sort of panic was the fact that my brother had come back into my life. I hadn't realized it so plainly before, but he scared me. I suppose he saw something of this in my face, for he says, 'Charley, let bygones be bygones, old man. Help me make a fresh start!'

"'Hold on,' I said. 'The last time I saw you, Frank, you had bags of money. You had my place in the house----.' 'Oh, dry up!' he says, 'never mind what I had, look at me now. Charley, look at me. I've walked every foot of the way from Rosario. I'm broke, cleaned out, desperate. I've nothing to lose.'

"'You never had,' I told him. 'What do you want me to do?'

"Well, what do you think he asked me for? Nothing less than fifty pounds. He seemed to have a mania for fifty pounds. He couldn't demean himself, even in that state, to make it less. You might say he thought in fifties. 'Good God, man!' I said, 'do you think I'm made of money?' 'You look prosperous, Charley. Give me what you have and I'll take the rest to-morrow.' 'I'll do nothing of the sort,' I said. 'Here's my car.' And a Number Forty-eight came down _Victoria_. 'Is it?' says he. 'It's mine too, then,' and he follows me up to the track.

"When I had sat down in the car I began to think. I didn't know what to do. Evidently my brother had been so absorbed in his own life, so indifferent to anything that had happened to me, that he didn't even know what I was. That didn't prevent him asking nearly three months' wages of me, though! Now, if he saw me go down to the ship he would never let me alone. He sat there in the car near the door, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bowed to hide his chest, the paper ticket twisting in his fingers. That my brother! It came to me with a sudden shock, a spasm, that, as usual, right was on his side. I _couldn't_ leave him like that. And yet what could I do? If I gave him money he would only prey on me again. Never mind: it was my duty to aid him. When the car stopped at the end of _Paseo Colon_ I had made up my mind. I dropped off and waited in the dark shadow of the buildings opposite the _Parque Leyema_. He came up to me. I could see his lips trembling and his hands clutching. 'Charley, don't you play me false, don't you play me false! My God, Charley, I'll kill you--I'll do something with you, if you play me false.' It was like a child in hysterics. I didn't realize it immediately, but that was just what was the matter with my brother--hysteria. 'Easy,' I said, 'where can I take you? I'm not known here.' 'Take!' he says, 'to your own house, of course.' 'Listen,' I said. 'Do you hear what I say?' He nodded. 'Well,' I went on, 'I'm the chief engineer of a steamer in yon dock. If you come down with me, don't forget there's a sentry with a rifle on that bridge we've got to cross, there's two more patrolling the quay, and there's another armed watchman on board. And, Frank,' I added, 'when a man runs here, they shoot. They find out if he was a criminal afterwards. Understand?' He looked down on the ground, his shoulders moving in a sort of convulsion. 'Come on,' I said.

"He followed me like a shadow over the bridge, along the quay and up the gangway. The watchman saw us come aboard, but otherwise the dock was deserted. My room was on the starboard side, the second door in the alleyway. I looked along and down in the engine-room. The Fourth was down below reading a novel on the bench by the dynamo. All the rest were still ashore--up at the _Bier Convent_ or the _Apollo_, I suppose. I opened my door and Frank stepped inside.

"'Now,' I said, shutting the ports, 'you're safe.'

"He sat side-ways on the settee, shading his eyes with his hands. Now that I saw him in the cold glare of two thirty-two candle-power lamps, he was awful. I took off my coat and set to work. From a drawer I took out a suit of underwear, socks, a suit of blue dungarees, a flannel shirt, an old cap and a pair of bluchers. I rolled these up in a big bath towel and handed them to Frank. 'Frank,' I said, 'listen.' He nodded. 'See this key? It fits the bath-room. The bath-room is the last wooden door in this alleyway. Go down there, open the door, take the key with you, lock yourself in, switch on the light, have a bath from head to foot, put these clothes on, roll up those rags in the towel and bring them back. If you meet anybody take no notice, act as if you belonged. Here's some soap.'

"I looked up and down the alleyway--no one there. Up and down outside the watchman slouched on the iron deck. Down below was the drone of the dynamo and the wheeze and whine of the Weir pumps. 'Go on,' I said. 'Mind, the last wooden door on the right. Don't go round the corner. Understand?' He looked at me for a moment and then flitted away down the long iron tunnel. I saw him poke about with his key, his body all crouched, the white bundle sticking out behind him. And then he vanished, and the door, heavy teak, slammed.

"I went into the mess-room then, to get some food. The steward as a rule left supper out for the juniors on duty, but as our young fellow had deserted I had to get the joint out of the pantry and carve some cold meat myself. I remember wondering what the Fourth would think if he came up and found the Chief nosing round the provision locker. There's a certain dignity, you see, that you mustn't lower before subordinates. However, he was too busy reading down below. I got a big plate of sandwiches and a slab of currant cake and went back to my room. I had a neat little mahogany dumb-waiter near the settee and I put it up and covered it with a linen towel. I spread the grub on it, and alongside of it I put a flask of whisky and a syphon of soda. I got quite interested. I had no idea of what to do with the man when he was washed and fed and clothed. I got down a box of cigars and set them alongside of the whisky. After all, he was my brother. I thought of the 'lady of high rank.' If she'd seen him as I saw him, she would have been satisfied. What would Gladys think of him? It may have been wrong, but I was rather pleased with myself. I was tickled to be able to help my brother. I knew that it was risky. I had no right to bring him aboard. I sat down to wait, when I saw that I'd forgotten to tie up my canary, and I was hunting for the calico I used at sea when the door opened and my brother came in with a rush.

"It almost seemed as though soap and water had had a magical effect on him. Literally, he wasn't the same man. His arms and legs stuck out of the dungarees, his hair was still damp and hung between his eyes, and his big hooked nose was dark red with towelling. He stood there, his hand on the brass knob, looking at me pinning a piece of calico round my canary.

"He looked at the little dumb-waiter spread for his supper and passed his hand over his face. 'Charley,' he says, 'I must have a shave first. The pangs of a guilty conscience,' he says, 'are piffle compared with the miseries of a beard. Have you a good razor?'

"I had in my room a fold-up wash-stand and shaving-glass. I opened it and pointed to the razors. 'There's no hot water,' I said. 'No hot--Why, Charley, you don't expect a chap to shave in cold, do you? Good God, man!'

"I give him credit for any amount of admiration for my little arrangements. I got out a little tripod spirit lamp with a copper-kettle that Rosa had given me; he was delighted. ''Pon my soul, Charley, you're an ingenious devil! Fancy you living here all so snug and I knowing nothing about it! Like Noah in his Ark, 'pon my soul.' When he began to lather he kept up a running fire of remarks, mostly insulting. 'And what are you here, old man? Admiral? Lord High Muck-a-Muck? They put you up a jolly sight better than they did me in the second cabin of that infernal liner I came over in. Heavens! Old Uncle Christopher wanted me to go to New Zealand. He was cracked about New Zealand; dippy, 'pon my soul. When I asked to see the manager of the affair, you know, the Skipper, they showed me an underbred brass-bound official called a _Purser_, who said he'd put me in irons if I wasn't civil. Oh, this world has some bounders in it, Charley, my boy. What do you get here, Charley? Pretty good screw, I suppose?' And so he ran on. When he had finished spilling the talcum powder all over the floor, using my brushes for his hair, he turned round and looked over the provisions.

"'Frank,' I said, 'when you've had something to eat and drink, I'll have a talk with you.' 'With pleasure, my dear chap,' says he. 'But what a meal! Mutton and sandwiches, cake and whisky. Is this your usual feed, Charley, may I ask? No wonder you look dyspeptic.' 'We're out of pheasant,' I said. He looks at me and bursts out laughing. 'Charley, my boy, I wonder how much you really will stand.' 'I'll tell you presently,' I said, and went on smoking.

"Dyspepsia didn't scare him much. He went across my dumb-waiter, eating every crumb, drinking every drop of the whisky and soda. Then he took a cigar, snipped it in his big teeth and held out his hand for a match. And then--he was sitting on my red plush settee, while I was in my arm chair--he swung his feet up and lay back on the cushions, puffing the smoke up in great clouds. 'Quite a reader!' he says, waving his cigar towards my book-case. 'You were always a chap for worming.'

"'Frank,' I said, 'we've a long account to settle. Somehow or other we've always been antagonistic. Why?'

"'How do you mean?' he says.

"'What have I done to you, that you should be always turning up and queering my pitch?'

"'Oh, you mean Gladys,' he says laughing. 'No,' I said, 'I don't mean Gladys particularly. I mean everything. Every time we come together you do me a bad turn.'

"'How can I do you a bad turn now?' he inquires blandly. 'I don't know,' I said, 'I don't know.'

"'I can tell you how you can do me a good turn, old man,' he says, sitting up. 'Can't you get me a billet, here? Just to get home, you know.'

"'We don't go home,' I said. 'We're on a time charter between here and Genoa.' 'Oh, that'll do,' he says. 'I can go home from there easily enough.'

"'I can give you a fireman's job,' I said, 'or a greaser's.'

"'A greaser's!' he says, his eyes sparkling at me. 'You say that to me, Charley----' 'Easy,' I said, 'if you shout you'll have some one in here. All the jobs I can give you are inferior. You have no rating on a ship, Frank. I've had to work five years or more for this job. Your automobile engineering is no use to you here, you know. You're down and out, you said just now.'

"'Yes,' he said, 'that's a fact. I must be humble and take anything. Anything, Charley.' 'Well,' I said, 'I can give you a light easy job as steward here for the engineers. If you hustle round you can pick it up. You'll have to swallow all your pride, you know, as I did when I came to sea. You'll have to make beds, tidy up the rooms, lay the table, wash dishes. Will you do it? The last one has just deserted. I was going to get one to-night if I hadn't met you.'

"He lay on the settee a long while, smoking and looking angrily at the books in the case.

"'Mind,' I said, 'this is on condition that in Genoa you clear out and leave me in peace. It's on condition you sign on under an assumed name. I've a position here. If it was known--you understand. I'm the chief engineer and it might cause trouble.'

"'Charley,' he says at last, 'you're a good chap and I'm a rotter. I'm a bad egg, a rolling stone, flotsam, garbage, punk, anything you like that smells to heaven. I hate myself sometimes. It's hate of myself that makes me desperate. But, give me this chance. Perhaps a sea-voyage will brace me up. Genoa, you say? They speak French there, don't they?'

"'No,' I said, 'they speak Genoese.' I couldn't help being a little sarcastic about that. 'But you'll find they speak English at Cook's office.'

"He looked at me for a while, his big eyes blinking through the smoke. He was thinking, I suppose. There's no doubt he has a remarkably active mind. I could feel he was taking in the situation. Suddenly he put his arms up and stretched, his feet crushing against the end of the settee.

"'Charley, my boy,' says he, 'I'll winter in Italy, that's what I'll do. It'll be a change after Rosario,' he says.

"'You can do as you please,' I told him, 'when you're paid off.' 'Until then, you'll have to do what the Second Engineer tells you. Understand?'

"'Oh, yes, Charley, I'll be as humble as dirt,' he says.

"Well, he was. I sent him ashore with a few Argentine dollars to get a bed for the night, and the next morning he comes down to the ship, as meek as milk, and asks the Second for a job. I'd told the Second about him, saying he's been recommended to me by people ashore and so on. I can't say I was very sanguine about the experiment. About the time in port I mean. At sea I had no fears. I knew that the discipline of the sea would be more than a match for any brother of mine.